


Journey

by thatonewriterchick



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Adventure, Drabble, Gen, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 07:31:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12766122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatonewriterchick/pseuds/thatonewriterchick
Summary: One day, Steve woke up in a place he didn't recognize, but somehow survived. This is how.





	Journey

**Author's Note:**

> I poked around in the Minecraft section, but it was mostly Story Mode, which I never played. Still, I was inspired to write what I did know about! This hasn't been beta-ed (is that a word yet?), but I have looked over it a couple of times if that counts for anything.
> 
> Criticism and comments are welcome - enjoy!

An eternity ago, he woke to the sun above him, warm, but not unpleasant in a land that wasn’t his own. When Steve reflected on it, he isn’t sure how he survived; he spent the first few days stumbling around looking for familiarity. 

A city, a policeman, a ranger.

Instead, he found milling farm animals, hills and valleys that went on forever.

The first night had been the worst, with rain pouring down, flashing lightning and an obscured sky. Between the sharp cracks of thunder, he hadn’t been able to tell if the howling he heard was the wind or the wolves he’d seen from a distance earlier that afternoon.

Steve spent that first night huddling near the mouth of a cave, too terrified to venture away from the wet entrance or into the deep shadows of the unknown depths.

By the second day’s dawn, the rain had cleared and while the sun rose, he set out to find help once more. He walked until the sun was above him, though nothing had changed. Other than the cramping hunger in his stomach, anyway.

Being a city kid, hunger wasn’t completely foreign, but it wasn’t something he was used to dealing with. As he trudged on, he longed for thick hamburgers with melting cheese curling over the steaming beef patties and coupled with piles of crispy, golden fries. When he found water, he drank until his stomach ached and then continued on.

By the end of the second night, not only had he not found food or civilization, but he realized with dismay that the constellations were missing from the sky. 

Not that there weren’t stars.

But there were none of the ones his father had pointed out to him as a kid on their camping trips. And he’d prided himself on remembering each one, tracing them against the infinite night sky and preening under his father’s proud affirmations. Two decades later and he still could recall, could still pick them out of the smattering of winking lights.

The constellations in the sky simply weren't the ones from his childhood. 

Even worse were the sounds, the raspy clacking of bone smacking bone as the sun faded from view. He’d climbed a tree, fueled by little more than adrenaline, peering out into the night with blind eyes and straining his ears to listen to the strange noise move closer.

That was the first encounter with a skeleton, though it never actually saw him. He wouldn’t ever forget the sheer terror that shook him as the pile of bones stood at the base of the tree, head twisting this way and that, bow at the ready. Eventually, it moved on to better hunting grounds, but Steve hadn’t been able to leave the tree until sometime late the next morning.

He lost track of the days that passed, though he recalled the wild, desperate attempts near the end of his wandering. He’d attacked a cow, which had screamed in terror and ran when he’d hit it over the head with a heavy branch. It had moved with surprising speed considering its lumbering form and with him at his weakest, he hadn’t had the strength to give chase.

The sheep were no better and even in his famished state, he didn’t want to get kicked in the head by a spooked mule or horse, so he left them alone.

When he found a patch of wild pumpkin growing on the lip of a valley, he didn’t question. He smashed the nearest one open, clumsy fingers pushing the soft orange flesh and seeds into his mouth without discrimination. He scraped the inside clean, not bothering to clean the remnants from under his nails as he ate his second and then third.

It hadn’t been a burger and fries, but it had been the most delicious thing he’d ever eaten.

Things had gotten easier after that first meal.

Steve’s first home had been a messily excavated space in the side of a hill and he’d spent the first night there, the entrance blocked with stones. He’d babied his one torch the entire night, its fluttering light filling the small space and giving him something akin to hope for the first time since his arrival. Much later came the small wood shack, though compared to the hole that had become familiar, it had felt like a mansion.

The plan had been to stockpile supplies and wander in each direction, leaving markers and filling out the stretch of leather he’d fashioned into a crude map. Eventually there had to be a town that could tell him where he was, where he could find help.

How he could get back home.

After days and days of wandering in each direction, returning home to restock and head out again did he find a village.

None of the villagers spoke the same language as him, but rather a series of grunts that seemed limited to only a handful of inflections and tones. They were more interested in trading paper and the leathery flesh of zombies than trying to help. He’d been frustrated, but they at least let him stay the night to avoid the creatures that emerged in the darkness.

He’d left early in the morning, helping himself to as many potatoes, carrots and beets as he could carry in his knapsack, leaving a pouch of pumpkin seeds since he hadn’t spotted any among the crops.

More days trickled by, until he and the villagers were on good terms. He never was able to understand their language, but they communicated in other ways – mostly pointing and head nods, but it was better than nothing.

And then one morning he’d arrived, Alex had been standing in the forge, talking to the smith in those grunts.

Not that he’d known that was her name at the time.

She’d glanced at him and then had done a double take. Steve liked to think it was because of the commissioned armor he’d been wearing, though it was likely that an outsider could always spot another.

She’d finished her conversation and without preamble, introduced herself. Wanted to compare notes.

And it turned out, they had a lot in common. Neither knew how they had wound up there, though Steve hadn’t realized there was a part of the world where it snowed all year round. That was where Alex had woken up and had been taken in by villagers soon after.

Both had come from a place where there had been cars and electricity, where they had left jobs and broken families behind.

That night, they had shared an empty storage building, struggling to remember details about their pasts. She explained that with time, they would forget their old lives and eventually die, becoming just another skeleton. That she knew because she’d seen it happen to others who had come before her.

For the rest of the night, she’d pressed him for information about himself, forcing him to push through the fog in his memory to give answers. In the morning, she gave him a leather bound journal, quill and a bit of ink to start with. At her insistence, he promised to fill the pages with his adventures, starting from the beginning while it was fresh in his mind.

Steve kept his promise and the few times they’d met up after, they exchanged information, tips and skills. It was from Alex that he learned how to kill Endermen and harvest their eyes, though it took four more meetings to understand what they were for. He made maps for her and brought her seeds for crops she needed.

The last time he saw her, her diamond armor glinted in the morning light, shimmering with enchantments and her green eyes were hard with determination. She told him she was going to see where the eyes led to when thrown and as soon as he was ready, to follow.

It wasn’t much longer that he did and found the portal, filling it with the remaining eyes he’d hoarded. He’d found and killed the dragon, but no evidence of Alex left him worried she had become the thing they’d been fighting every night.

When he stepped through the portal, he wasn’t sure what to expect.

He especially wasn’t expecting to wake up at his desk wearing a white polo and khaki pants. The clacking of computer keys and the trill of ringing phones and people speaking in pleasant tones, using words he could understand was like a foreign language to him. As he tried to understand, someone touched his shoulder, scaring him to his feet.

Alex was smiling knowingly at him as she welcomed him back. Instead of enchanted armor, she wore a modest three piece suit. Steve didn’t understand, but neither did she, nor did she care. He wanted to ask her if it was a dream, but as he began to speak, she shifted and a glint at her throat drew his attention. The eye of an Enderman winked at him, the glassy green eye sitting in a gold chain. And then he knew it was real because they hadn’t known each other before and he could never forget those eyes or the terror of fighting those tall shadowy figures with the violet gaze that turned green after their owners’ deaths.

Steve’s hands were shaking as he checked the time at the corner of the computer screen at his desk. The countless days and nights of horror and hunger and fatigue were nothing more than a couple of blanked out minutes in his own world and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. Alex seemed content with leaving it be, to celebrate their return and survival.

Weeks later, when life in the city made since again, he found the tattered journal in the work khakis he’d first woken in after his return. Its cover was worn, soft to the touch and familiar. Inside, its pages were thin with uneven edges, the words written with quills scratched out in uneven lines across the page.

Steve read through it all, from the first day until the day before he went to face the unknown destination of the thrown eyes. Settling at the bar in his tiny, overpriced apartment, he opened his laptop and then a word document.

The courser blinked at him for a few seconds before he settled his fingers over the keys and tapped out the beginning of his journey with the title: _Minecraft._

Fin


End file.
